Sensex opens 21 points lower, Nifty slightly down in dull trade

After closing with slight gains on Wednesday, it's a dull day for the market as the Sensex opened 21 points lower at 17,236.36. The Nifty also opened 11 points lower at 5227.80.

The US Federal Reserve stopped short of offering new monetary stimulus on Wednesday even as it signaled further bond buying could be in store to help a US economic recovery that it said had lost momentum this year.

The Asian markets held steady ahead of the ECB meeting on Thursday after the Fed meeting proved to be a non-event.

Domestically, data showed that the eight core industries grew 3.6 percent in June as compared to 5.6 percent last year and 4 percent last month. July manufacturing also slipped lowest since November last year and June exports shrunk by 5 percent compared to last year.

Reuters

However, there is little reason to lose hope in the equity markets as FII funds continued to flow in to total Rs 11,152 crore in July, according to provisional regulatory data, their biggest purchases since February. Foreign inflows into stocks so far in 2012 now stand at a net Rs 52,266 crore.

The poor monsoons is pushing the government to take drought measures. It announced a Rs 2,000 crore drought relief for five states.

The FMCG stocks including ITC and HUL has managed to stay high pushing the sector indices by 18 points. IT index also posted slight gains while the power, realty and banks indices are down.

The gainers in the opening session today include SBI, Tata Motors, Manappuram Finance and JP Infra while Hero Motocorp, Coal India, IDFC, Essar Oil and Canara Bank were among the losers